Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Christmas Eve Ramblings

The commute this morning was very quiet.Looks like most people have taken Christmas Eve off.Ironically, as I chose my seat in the half-empty carriage, my MP3 was playing Another Hundred People (Just Got Off Of The Train) from Company.

Work proved less relaxed.The mail server problem that began yesterday dragged on right the way through today and is still ongoing as I write.Luckily it’s not me who is responsible for troubleshooting it (that would be Rob S) so I only had to deal with the stress during the day.I feel somewhat bad about Rob having to take care of it – he has two young sons, has just (last week) moved house and I suspect he’ll be working from time to time on Christmas Day – but conversely it isn’t really my job any more and he has the better skillset to get it done.

The FTP problem turned out to be a bizarre (read: Microsoft’s over-engineered handholding!) quirk of IE7 and was duly noted for the future.(It turns out that the client accepted our submission in the end.Phew!)

The commute home was even more deserted than on the way in.The Waterloo area felt like some post-apocalyptic movie; roads that are normally nose-to-tail were totally empty of traffic.Even more ironically I thought, as I walked through all this strange emptiness, I was listening A New World (Songs For a New World) and Sunday (Sunday in the Park with George).The former is a very upbeat, uplifting song about how life changes on you when you least expect it and the latter evokes the pleasure of strolling through a small French park on a sunny Sunday afternoon.Between them they nicely captured both the unexpectedly empty streets and my sunny disposition at walking away from a stressful day at work into a four-day weekend with nothing that I really have to do.

I managed to miss my train home though. It was shorter than I expected and I was so engaged with my music and reading (OMG, I’m reading romantic gay fiction these days!Help, I’m turning into my mother/sister!!) that I didn’t notice it stopping further down the platform.Luckily Brett was able to pick me up at Lewisham to save me the bus ride with all the bounty I’d plundered from work – I’d taken mince pies and brandy cream in this morning which had only been half eaten, Rob had brought Danish pastries (ditto) and there were four pints of milk and a pile of fruit left over in our kitchen at the end of the day which wouldn’t survive the long weekend, so I brought them home.

When I got in and sat down to unwind I got chatting to Mikey F on Facebook, only for him to drop offline a few lines into the conversation.It’s not the first time he’s done it and it really annoys me.It is simply rude behaviour – something which I find strange coming from him as, in person, he is thoroughly polite – so I think that he and I will be having a little chat about online etiquette when next we meet.

Brett salvaged my mood with dinner.He’s been cooking lots of low-carbohydrate food of late to help with his exercise regimen and despite his continuous doubts he always manages to produce hot, tasty, filling meals.I think I enjoy eating this kind of healthily.Now all I have to do is get back on my bike before the New Year!(Can’t be doing it as a ‘New Year’s Resolution’ now, can I?People never stick to them!)